Networks having large amounts of multicasting sessions as primary application traffic face many issues, including path management, fault tolerance, and routing performance and quality of service. Attempts to address these issues have often concentrated on implementing solutions at a network level. Path aggregation, for example, using shared multicast trees has been implemented at a network level during network router configuration. However, this solution fails to yield centralized, dynamic control of the network that provides a powerful tool for network resource management, particularly with regard to high levels of multicasting traffic.
What is needed is a system and method of provisioning routes at the application level that can apply the principles of path aggregation to multicast address assignment and network router control to more successfully manage network resources in the context of high levels of multicasting traffic. The present invention provides such a solution.